The Trump Administration has made a deal™ with the United Arab Emirates to sell weapons for $2 billion -- this, though the UAE (like the U.S.!) has worked with Saudi Arabia in their war on Yemen, and this war has pushed that nation to the brink of famine. And, ah, over what, exactly? Over the possibility that Saudi Arabia would have less influence in Yemen, thanks to a civil war upsetting a power-sharing structure that was a house of cards to begin with? This is why they bomb funeral processions and destroy Yemeni infrastructure? Yes, al-Qaeda and ISIS have both set up shop there, but (stop me if you've heard this before!) the Saudi war aims to destroy the one group that has actually effectively fought ISIS in Yemen. And here you thought this was exactly the sort of crapshow Donald Trump would stop us from getting drawn into! Anyway, as I've suggested, he doesn't get all the say about it -- Just Foreign Policy joins with MoveOn to help you tell your Congressfolk to block the Administration's UAE arms deal at least until we can keep Yemen out of famine. Because famine is unconscionable anywhere on Earth.
Meanwhile, Mattel plans to release a "smart baby monitor" called Aristotle, one that would enable you to see what your child's doing in another room, but would also talk to your child. Why is that better than a baby monitor and parental interaction? I don't know, but Aristotle doesn't just interact with your child, but collects data about whatever it sees -- like patterns of sleep, eating, and changing -- and given that it can connect to online retailers, it might well share that data with them, so that your child's "interactive" experience can soon be cluttered with advertisements! Far too often in our sick, immoral, and decadent culture, "smart" devolves into "what makes more unearned money," but I'm so old-fashioned I only care about making parenting more efficient, which technologies like the oven, the washing machine, and the refrigerator have already done. Hence the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood helps you tell Mattel to abandon their privacy-destroying, commercial-haze-inducing Aristotle. And maybe stop giving the author of Poetics a bad name while they're at it.
Finally, we learn that the Department of the Interior has declared that all comments about Antiquities Act monuments (including the Bears Ears National Monument) must be submitted after May 12, meaning if you submitted one beforehand, you'll have to do it again. Also, for whatever reason, the comment period on Bears Ears only lasts 15 days, while the comment period on other national monuments lasts 60 days. I don't see any of that surviving a legal challenge (why single out one monument over others is but one question a lawyer would have); it's enough to make one wonder if Mr. Trump is actually trying to run our government so badly that we have no choice but to dive into the arms of whomever the Democrats nominate in 2020. But we can't get caught up in 13-dimensional chess, of course -- we have to do our duty as citizens, which is to communicate our will to our government. Hence WildEarth Guardians still helps you tell the Department of the Interior to leave the Bears Ears National Monument alone. Because drilling on public lands ain't worth more than the people's will.
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